So Nova Covert Ops mission pack 1 is out, anyone had a chance to give it a go?

I thought the story was supposed to be darker than the SCII trilogy (that's what I'd heard) but so far the presentation's still pretty silly. It's not surprising they chose to make Nova the main character since she's probably the most compelling non-main character out there and also this will appease the people still pining for Ghost.

I'm going to reserve opinions on the actual story for now until at least the second mission pack comes out, but I don't have any actual problem with the Psi Emitter thing going on with the Defenders of Man, I guess.

I am a big fan of the new tileset stuff going on, especially that Tarsonis building interior in map 3. The gameplay isn't always the best (that vulture driving sequence was soooo quirky and minigamey) but I will say that it's a welcome shakeup from the usual SC2 mission structure of Do This Thing Three Times.

namenogo did his run early somehow, I think by connecting to a different server? pretty stupid how exploitable blizzard is. From what I saw of it on his stream it's pretty much the most meh SC2 can get, fairly unnoffending with the exception of some really stupid ideas/oversights (like that vulture section).

First mission had a lot of decorative stuff in it but it didn't actually make for all that good of gameplay. Kinda trying too hard. The second mission, taking advantage of more conventional SC2 stuff (timed attack waves from the enemy) was decent enough, although not overwhelmingly better than stuff you'd see on SC2 arcade. The third mission has a build and destroy beginning that works well enough on brutal (actually felt like brutal rather than mission 2 which even on brutal was pretty easy) and then transitions into "kill the guys with stun grenades and swords". Felt a bit awkward to me at times but since this is just the first third of the missions I'm not too disappointed.

The only time I was like "nice" was in the third mission, more in the new unit upgrade concepts than in actually playing with them in that particular mission. In particular the jump pack siege tanks seemed like a nice mechanic. I also generally enjoyed reaper hero nova in mission 2. So I'd say mission 1 was a bit of a wash, but missions 2 and 3 were fine. Not great, but OK for the first third of the total pack.